“GRACE NOT UNDERSTOOD”
Saint Luke 18: 31-43
Quinquagesima: 7 February Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
You’ve heard the events of Bartimaeus’ healing many, many times. Your “old sinful nature” is not only bored, like it is bored of the Small Catechism, but it petulantly challenges the Lord to show some miraculous healing right NOW…in your day and age…for you and your loved ones!
But it was real—it was devastatingly real for Bartimaeus. He may have been a “certain blind man” but he was known to Christ; known, loved, and chosen in Christ’s heart from even before The Second Person of the Trinity had a beating human heart. Bartimaeus was inscribed on the palms of Jesus from all eternity. Those with vision dread and fear how horrible it would be to be blind. But they’re thinking of one who could originally see and then loses sight. To one born blind, it simply is the status quo. To be spiritually blind, a non-believing pagan, is infinitely worse—or eternally worse as the afterlife in Hades will be forever. But here too, one born an enemy of God, a rejecter of Grace, knows nothing else. Those dead in spiritual darkness are not looking to chose anything else. Those who do not know they are blind are the most pitiful of all men. Those who do not know they are sinners are the tragic ones. Sad too is when you, especially you, embraced in an Evangelical-Catholic communion, (i.e. confessing Lutheranism) sin with hypocrisy and presumption. Your intellectual grasp of theology will not save you from damnation. Your encyclopedic and minute remembrance of all the Bible stories and events won’t atone for the sins of just this morning! Blessed are the blind who know they are blind and who call out for help. Most blessed are the sinners who know their lost and condemned situation and entreat the Lord with petitions for forgiveness. Saint Bartimaeus was both sinner and blind man, and, he knew both conditions. His cry to Jesus that fateful day was predicated on his confession of sin and His trust in the Healing Messiah coming to him—rescuing the lost lamb. His plaintiff wail of emotional distress, however, is for physical relief—mercy from blindness and mercy from being a beggar.
His continued cries in the face of rejection, “they…rebuked him that he should hold his peace,” are not only instructive to all of you on how to pray, but also demonstrate that he knew exactly Who he was praying to: “Jesus, Thou Son of David,” Savior, the Seed of David, Judah, Abraham, God! When brought to The Lord by the “12” he boldly puts his hearts’ need straightway into Jesus’ hands: “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” He was forthright and earnest because He knew Who Jesus was and what Jesus could do.
One crying, from faith given, for Mercy promised, receives the object of said faith. The blind man is made a seeing man. The beggar is given a fortune. And while the “healing” is a miracle the Greek word used is “sign.” Yes the crowd, including the “12,”marveled at this incredible event—for never, not once, had a blind man been restored in all of Israel, in all of Hebrew Scripture. But more so, the crowd, including the “12,” “gave praise unto God.”
The sign was that Messias was there, is here! Emmanuel. The promise to Eve of the Redeemer to come had been kept. Not only would Bartimaeus be given his sight but Abel would be raised from the bloody ground whole and glorified. His promises of life and salvation are believed by you because His promise of forgiveness of sins is given to you! He is God. He is the God/Man and your flesh united with His flesh, by receiving His Flesh (Body and Blood) has peace now and immortality and perfection in the world to come.
Bartimaeus saw again, and will see forever because Jesus set His eyes, His face towards Jerusalem; because His Holy eyes were blinded in death. The crushed skull of Stephen healed, the mangled body of James made whole, the bloody headless bodies of Paul and John The Baptist crowned again with smiling faces beholding the face of their Lord and Master. Your infirmities and diseases gone and never to be remembered…all because Jesus is God; is Man; and: “all things that are written by the Prophets concerning the Son of man [are] accomplished. For He [was] delivered unto the Gentiles, and [was] mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on; [He was] scourge[d] and put…to death...and the third day [He rose] again.”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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